Abstract
Animals have long appeared as the subjects and characters in digital games, but game studies scholars have rarely considered animals as players of digital games. This paper examines the mobile digital game Ant Smasher and YouTube videos of bearded dragons playing the game. This article advocates for the inclusion of these bearded dragons in gamerspace as not only a personification of the gamer within the space but as a conduit for play, a channel for gamers to breach the boundaries of gamerspace – the cultural and discursive space surrounding digital games that negotiates the relationship between the digital game and its impact on the world at large. Through an analysis of 50 YouTube videos representing these play experiences, this article considers the place of these videos within gamerspace. The implications of this work serve to better understand the relationships between digital gaming, play, and human and non-human actors in interaction with haptic media. This example also expands upon our understandings of play as a whole.
Highlights
Animals have long appeared as the subjects and characters in digital games
This paper will examine a viral phenomenon that has outgrown from the game; the over-11,000 YouTube videos of bearded dragons playing Ant Smasher, and its implications of this gaming experience for our understanding of haptic play, defined here as tactile and gestural play
I will describe the nature of several representative videos on YouTube, in order to examine the nature of these relationships in haptic play
Summary
From early representations of the cartoonish giant ape of Donkey Kong to the slithering snakes, scorpions and crocodiles in Pitfall, animals have been featured in digital games as designers wished to represent the natural world. As these gaming interfaces have improved graphically and interactively, digital games have sought to replicate the relationships and representation gamers have with these digital animals. Studies performed on Ant Smasher have included an investigation of the touch-based architecture of digital games (Mansfield-Devine, 2012), and touch-spam detection in mobile applications (Vani et al, 2014). This paper will examine a viral phenomenon that has outgrown from the game; the over-11,000 YouTube videos of bearded dragons playing Ant Smasher, and its implications of this gaming experience for our understanding of haptic play, defined here as tactile and gestural play
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